“Stirring Up the Past”

As I stopped at this crossroads, I took a quick photo with my iPhone.  Something about the huge silhouette of the tree and house against the swirling sky demanded my attention.   Images don’t always speak to me fully until I begin painting them.  The process causes me to slow down and really look, so that my mind can ponder and analyze and make allegories while I paint.

I stirred and swirled the paint for the clouds.  I swished and scumbled the ruts in the dusty road.  I imagined a dusty truck, with big tires, wheeling past the stop sign, to turn left.  The wind whispered through the towering trees as I placed the pale yellow tops of weeds, reflecting sunlight from above.  And all the while there sat this dark form of a house in the middle of it all, oblivious to the movement around it, mysterious in its shroud of overgrown foliage.  It was an object of the past.  I imagined no one lived in it for years.

The phrase, “stirring up the past” popped into mind.  “STOP (as in the Stop sign) stirring up the past” kept floating in and out of my thoughts.  Just as the imaginary truck in this image did, I suppose I’m being encouraged to keep rolling on.  No need to stir up the past!  The dust will settle soon.